Oct. 14—JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — Seven Mountains Media will acquire 34 radio stations from Forever Media, including stations in Johnstown, Altoona, and State College, the company's owner said on Thursday.

"We plan to serve more local radio — more, more, more, nothing less," Seven Mountains Media owner and CEO Kristin Cantrell said.

Cantrell lives in Kentucky, but previously lived in Johnstown and worked in the Johnstown and Altoona markets from 2003 to 2007.

Seven Mountains Media's Pennsylvania headquarters is in State College. The company also has stations in New York, she said.

Seven Mountains is buying the stations for $17.3 million, with $1.7 million of that from assuming Forever Media's debt, according to radioinsight.com.

Johnstown's stations are Hot 92.1, WJHT; Froggy 95.5, WFGI; Christian AC K-Love 97.7, WLKH; Rocky 99.1, WRKW; and Cool 101.7, WCCL.

"The partners of Forever Media, as a course of succession planning, decided they wanted to split the company, and so we are buying the markets including Johnstown, and Forever Media is keeping stations in Pittsburgh, York, Wilmington, Delaware, and Maryland, too," Cantrell said. "Forever Media kept fewer markets, but bigger markets. We took markets contiguous with our existing footprint."

Listeners may be hearing programs on different signal configurations, but there won't be any immediate changes, she said.

"We hope to close the deal by the end of the year, pending FCC approval," she said.

She said current employees of Forever Media at the stations to be acquired by Seven Mountains will have the opportunity to continue in their jobs.

"No one is losing a job. If anything, we'll be hiring more," she said. "There's rumors going around that we come in and clean house or hire all new people, and that's the exact opposite of what we do at Seven Mountains Media. Everybody is offered a job, full-time or part-time, depending on what their current situation is."